Saturday, March 12, 2011

I went to the “too much is not enough” School of Italian cooking but I still cut a corner now and then.

Homemade lasagna is a vegetarian crowd pleaser, but making the tomato sauce from scratch can be a whole day standing and stirring in and of itself.

That was too much at the moment, so I opened a jar of De Cecco. Sue me.

I like De Cecco sauces because they are acidy, like a good Summer tomato. Besides, were I actually Italian I’d be calling it “gravy” anyway, not sauce.

Cook the noodles with a bit of olive oil (so they don’t stick together) in a lot of salted, boiling water until they’re limp, but not yet soft. They’ll soften in the oven. Sauce your best baking dish, layer the noodle, add a bit more sauce and then spoon in a layer of fresh ricotta.

Add layers of fresh basil...

...grate lots of reggiano parmigiana...

...layer in thin-sliced fresh mozzerella and a bit of ground pepper, too. You can’t really make a mistake here.

Just layer in the stuff you love. A noodle layer. More sauce. We used pesto sauce, too. More ricotta.

Build it up until the baking dish is almost full, then finish with a final layer of all three cheeses. Oh yeah.

Add another grate of fresh pepper, maybe a bit of dried oregano. Place the whole thing on a cookie sheet because it can bubble over. That’s it.

Pull a cork on a good red and sit back for 45 minutes at 350 degrees, then throw together a couple nice salads and at about the one hour mark, I think you’re good to go. Yum.

So while talking with Cassidy we discovered that Grendel’s Lair, a Philly rock club on South Street where I had worked lighting back in the day had become a hip hop lounge where he had just performed the night before---same venue in Philly now under a different name--- and only about ooooohhhh, 35 years later.